Should we be tolerant all the time?

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Hi there,

A very important edict was issued by the Emperor Theodosius the Great in about AD380 which not only signed the death nell for Paganism but for Religious toleration as well. Remember that most of the nations of Europe,the middle east and north africa were still under Roman control. Here it is translated:

“It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue in the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it hath been preserved by faithful tradition; and which is now professed by Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgment, they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation, and in the second the punishment which our authority, in accordance with the will of Heaven, shall decide to inflict.”

We are obviously much more tolerant nowdays thank God, however it may well be that but for edicts such as the above, many people may never have learned the Truth of Christianity, or may have fell foul of heresy. Lets be frank, throughout the ages the Church has required political power to prevail against all kinds of evils that have occurred. Therefore does anyone feel that some ages demand less toleration for Good to prevail? For example schools are teaching relativism. Will it be time once again to take the hard line once again?
 
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kildare:
Hi there,

A very important edict was issued by the Emperor Theodosius the Great in about AD380 which not only signed the death nell for Paganism but for Religious toleration as well. Remember that most of the nations of Europe,the middle east and north africa were still under Roman control. Here it is translated:

“It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue in the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it hath been preserved by faithful tradition; and which is now professed by Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgment, they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation, and in the second the punishment which our authority, in accordance with the will of Heaven, shall decide to inflict.”

We are obviously much more tolerant nowdays thank God, however it may well be that but for edicts such as the above, many people may never have learned the Truth of Christianity, or may have fell foul of heresy. Lets be frank, throughout the ages the Church has required political power to prevail against all kinds of evils that have occurred. Therefore does anyone feel that some ages demand less toleration for Good to prevail? For example schools are teaching relativism. Will it be time once again to take the hard line once again?
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I don’t know who said this but:

“We should always be tolerant of persons, not never tolerant of error.”
 
Br. Rich SFO:
I don’t know who said this but:

“We should always be tolerant of persons, not never tolerant of error.”
Click to expand...
I agree. I think we do move on as a species though, holding on to out of date ideas about the world does not good at all. I do think that we grow in faith and in Christ. That is why we study history, to understand the present and to throw light upon the future.
 
Br. Rich SFO:
I don’t know who said this but:

“We should always be tolerant of persons, not never tolerant of error.”
Click to expand...
AMEN. Error must always be challenged with truth.
 
I agree that the error is the problem, and not the person, however in reality it is harder to separte the two. When someone contionues to live in error, i.e. continue to murder, you have to do something like put him in jail. My question should be rephrased. In the interest of having less people falling into error should we take rigorous action, as was done 1600years ago, or should we tolerate these things. And how far do we go? For example do we allow our society to transform into a non-christian secular society?Are we prepared to limit other peoples freedoms and standing?
 
I would propose that it was not so much the Church that was intolerant, but those in the position of civil rulers who saw uniformity of belief as the way of shoring up their ability to rule. Even the Spanish Inquisition was a request of Ferdinand and Isabella. Of course there have been clerical leaders, including some popes and bishops who followed the same policies. Look at the attempts by certain popes to hang on to the Papal States. The driver for intolerance IMO is the need to hold on to civil power, not religion per se.
 
Hi rwoehmke
I know where you are coming from, and I’m not blaming the church for the seemingly intolerant laws of Spain or later Roman Empire. Still it may have been part of the Divine plan to be intolerant at that time. Was it not for their own good in the end? We live in an age when to be tolerant is automatically seen as a virtue and I’m not so sure. Some beliefs are clearly dangerous. Perhaps one day we will need another civil ruler like Theodosius to enforce the distinction between the “foolish madmen” and the “catholic christians”, and yet open the door to their conversion.
 
I think that our faith can only grow stronger when we are allowed the opportunity of coming in contact with other religions and beliefs. Many of the strongest Catholics on this board were those who explored other religions and then returned home to the Catholic church. If our faith can’t withstand the scrutiny of disbelievers then we don’t have very strong beliefs.
 

The extermination of millions of Jews by Hitler was also part of God’s Providence or plan, in some sense - that does not even begin to make it a holy or righteous undertaking.​

“It’s for your own good” is sufficiently elastic as a moral principle to include everything and anything from beating a child because it is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to deserve it, to slaughtering millions of people purely because they follow a different religious or political allegiance.

Some - Reconstructionists, for instance - might decide that Catholics should not be tolerated, but executed for the sin of Popish idolatry; I don’t think that there would be quite the same Catholic rejection of tolerance as there is sometimes is now. But if we want toleration for ourselves, we cannot decently refuse it to others. And, to rely on political force to protect a particular understanding of Christ & the Gospel, shows a failure of faith that God to look after what is His, & a trust in sinful man’s power to do so instead of God.

And it can very easily pass from being intended for the good of the sufferer, to a being a justification for clearing a country of his unwelcome presence, either because he should be destroyed along with other sub-human vermin like Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexals, Communists, and similarly un-Aryan beings; or because they are “heretics”, “enemies of the Church”, “enemies of God”, “idolaters”, and so on.

It is far too dangerous a principle for sinful, fallen, weak, frail, human beings to allow themselves to use it. If it doesn’t produce Inquisitors, it produces Gauleiters or some kind of tyrant: and both are able to justify grossly inhumane treatment of others, and to do so in good conscience, not because they are monsters of cruelty, but because they can say that what they do is done for a higher purpose than their own selfish satisfaction: it is done for “the good of the Church and the glory of God”, or for “the Party and the Fuehrer”, or for some exalted Cause. That means that it can be come a duty - one can be cruel because one believes that God, State, Party, or Cause demands this.

When there is a perceived threat - the “subversion” of the Church, or of the State, say - there is an extra motive for severe measures. The problem here if one is Christian, is that one will use un-Christian means to accomplish a Christian end. But using means of this type to do the work of Christ, is no more Christian than telling lies in order to assist the progress of the Gospel. The God of all holiness has no need of unholy means for the doing of His work. It must be done in a Christ-like way, or not at all. The question for the various Churches is what this amounts to in practice.

The principles are easier to discover than the activities which go with them - that’s why some Churches disapprove of formal missionary societies, and why some disapprove of drinking alcohol. All are concerned with holy living: the problem is to find out what is allowable or tolerable as an element in this when there is no clear description of holy living as such, whether in the Bible or tradition. And the CC has passed from rejecting the death penalty for certain types of doctrinal error, to favouring it, to rejecting it again, perhaps because her understanding of what holy living implies in practice, has changed with her surroundings.

Judgements about the moral status of tolerance depend largely - but not entirely - on the moral status of the reason for toleration. Toleration is an “emergency” good - in a perfect society, ther would be no toleration, because no one would need to tolerate anything; they would be the kind of people who are perfectly conformed to Christ, so they would desire only what was good.

Toleration is necessary, because society is in fact not perfect - the people who compose it are not, neither are the things in it. But they have to be coped with - which is where tolerance is needed: whether of people’s unpleasant personal habits (such as picking their ears), or of their moral failings, or of their unwelcome certainties. It in these circumstances that toleration is a good and tolerance a virtue. Goods do not need it; no one tolerates being handsome or wise or kind - things not altogether good may need it when they cannot be readily corrected, or cannot be put right without doing harm. ##
 
Thanks

I think you’ve mainly answered a question. Toleration does make sense in an imperfect world, and people will constantly be changing their definitions of what it means to be holy. The classic example is what does the Christian do when he sees his neighbor being attacked. Soem would say he would wait after he was beaten to comfort him and help hi. Others might say that he should defend him- take up arms and commit violence. The line of how tolerant to be is ultimately very nuanced and testing.
 
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